Album Review: Fly Moon Die Soon by Takuya Kuroda

Takuya Kuroda hails from Kobe, Japan, a nation that to a dedicated strand of Western jazz obsessive serves as a sacred tomb of rare riches. You can place the trumpeter next to 20th-century Japanese virtuosos such as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Masabumi Kikuchi, Ryo Fukui, and Koichi Matsukaze, and he looks extremely comfortable in the lineage: All respected the core tenets of jazz while offering their own unique interpretations. Kuroda, after all, is a guy who has name-dropped Lee Morgan as an inspiration while playing in DJ Premier's touring outfit, the Badder band.

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